Leo Africanus

by Amin Maalouf

  And a challenge.

  ‘I’m going tomorrow, whatever happens. D’you want to come?’ said Harun one day.

  I looked at his eyes. He wasn’t joking.

  ‘D’you want to come?’

  It took all my courage to say no.

  ‘Better still,’ said Harun. ‘I’ll go on my own. But be here at midday, at this very place.’

  The next day it was dark and rainy. I took up my post at the place we had agreed, from which I could see the entrance to the hammam without being seen. I had not seen Harun all day, and I wondered whether he was already there, or whether he would be able to get inside. I was waiting for him to be thrown out, I was also afraid that he would leave pursued by twenty women at his heels, and that I should be forced to flee through the streets in my turn. The one thing that I was sure of was that the Ferret had not given up his mad plan. From time to time I looked up at the sun, or rather at its outline visible through the clouds. I was becoming impatient.

  There was no unusual movement at the entrance to the hammam. Some women were going in, others coming out, some enveloped in black or white, others with only their hair and the lower part of their faces covered. Little girls accompanied them, sometimes even very small boys. At one point a fat woman came towards me. When she drew level with me she stopped for a moment, inspected me from head to foot, and then set off again murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. My furtive air must have made me seem suspicious. Several minutes later, another woman, entirely covered from head to foot but much more slender, came towards the place where I was waiting. I was most uneasy. In turn, she stopped and turned towards me. I was going to take to my heels.

  ‘You’re here, in perfect safety, and you’re trembling?’

  It was Harun’s voice. He barely left me the time to express my surprise.

  ‘Don’t make any sign, don’t make any noise! Count to a hundred and then meet me at the house.’

  He was waiting for me at the door.

  ‘Tell me!’ I exploded.

  He took his time before replying, in the most careless tone:

  ‘I arrived, I went in, I pretended to look for someone, I went round all the rooms and then I came out again.’

  ‘Did you undress?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘Yes, lots.’

  ‘Tell me, may God shatter you into pieces!’

  He said nothing. His mouth did not express the slightest smile, the slightest grin. But his eyes sparkled with satisfaction and malice. I was crestfallen. I wanted to beat him black and blue.

  ‘Do you want me to beg you, to press my forehead against your slippers?’

  The Ferret was not in the slightest impressed by my sarcasm.

  ‘Even if you beg me, even if you prostrate yourself at my feet I shall tell you nothing. I have taken risks which you refused to take. If you want to know what goes on when the women are there you must come with me next time.’

  I was aghast.

  ‘So you’re thinking of going again?’

  This seemed so obvious to him that he did not even deign to reply.

  The next day I was in position, and I saw him go in. He had improved his get-up considerably. He was not satisfied with wrapping himself in a thick black robe, but he had a white scarf around his neck which covered his hair, a part of his forehead and his cheeks, with its ends tied together under his chin. Above this was a transparent white veil. The disguise was so perfect that I would have been taken in a second time.

  When I met up with him again he seemed bothered. I asked him to tell me about his escapade, but he refused to do so, in spite of my insistence and my pleas. He remained obdurately silent, and I soon forgot the whole thing. However, it was Harun himself who would remind me of it, many years later and in a way which would remain for ever in my memory.

  Towards the end of that year my uncle came back from his travels. When they learned of his return the Andalusians of Fez came in groups, one after the other, to hear what he had to say and to inform themselves of the results of his mission. He told them in detail of his sea voyage, his fear of shipwreck and pirates, the sight of Constantinople, the palace of the Grand Turk, the janissaries, his travels in the lands of the Orient, in Syria, Iraq, Persia, Armenia and Tartary.

  However, he soon came to the most important part.

  ‘Everywhere my hosts declared themselves convinced that one day soon the Castilians will be beaten, by the leave of the Most High, that Andalus will become Muslim once more, and that each one of us will be able to return to his home.’

  He did not know when, or under what circumstances, he admitted, but he could testify to the invincible power of the Turks, of the terror which the sight of their vast armies would strike in the heart of every man. He was convinced of their profound concern for the fate of Granada, and their desire to deliver it from the unbelievers.

  Of all those present, I was not the least enthusiastic. When we were alone together that evening, I insisted on asking my uncle:

  ‘When do you think we shall return?’

  He seemed not to understand what I wanted to say.

  I told myself that he must be weary after his journey.

  ‘To Granada, isn’t that what you were talking about?’

  He looked at me for a long time, as if sizing me up, before saying, in a slow and emphatic voice:

  ‘Hasan, my son, you are now in your twelfth year and I must speak to you as if I were speaking to a man (he hesitated a moment further). Hear me well. What I have seen in the Orient is that the Grand Sophy of Persia is preparing to wage war against the Turks, who are themselves primarily preoccupied with their own conflict with Venice. As for Egypt, she has just received a consignment of corn from the Castilians as a token of friendship and alliance. That is the reality. Perhaps, in several years’ time, things will have changed, but, today, none of the Muslim sovereigns whom I have met seemed to me to be concerned with the fate of the Granadans, whether of ourselves, the exiles, or the poor Strangers.’

  In my eyes there was less disappointment than surprise.

  ‘You will ask me,’ Khali continued, ‘why I should have told those people who were here the opposite of the truth. You see, Hasan, all those men still have, hung up on their walls, the key to their houses in Granada. Every day they look at it, and looking at it they sigh and pray. Every day their joys, their habits and a certain pride come back to their memory, and these things they will never rediscover in exile. The only reason for their existence is the thought that soon, thanks to the Great Sultan or to Providence, they will find their house once again, with the colour of its stones, the smell of its garden, the water of its fountain, all intact, unaltered, just as it has been in their dreams. They live like this, they will die like this, and their sons will do so after them. Perhaps one day it may be necessary for someone to dare to teach them to look unflinchingly at their defeat, to explain to them that in order to get on one’s feet again one must first admit that one is down on the ground. Perhaps someone will have to tell them the truth one day. But I myself do not have the courage to do so.’

  The Year of the Raging Lions

  906 A.H.

  28 July 1500 – 16 July 1501

  My sister Mariam had grown up without my being aware of it. Two long separations had turned her into a stranger. We no longer shared the same roof, or the same games. When I crossed her path our words had lost their old complicity, and our glances no longer said anything to each other. It was only when she called out to me from the back of a mule that year that I came to see her again, gaze at her and remember the little girl whom I used to love and fight until she wept.

  It happened in early summer in an olive grove on the road to Meknes. My father had decided that I should accompany him, together with Warda and Mariam, on a tour of the countryside behind Fez. He was still looking for suitable land to rent. His plan was that with the assistance of some Andalusian agriculturalists whom he knew he would
introduce various crops which were little known and poorly cultivated on African soil, notably the white mulberry, the food of the silkworm.

  In the most minute detail, he told me about a huge enterprise in which one of the richest men in Fez would take part. Listening to him I had the impression that he had somehow emerged from the despondency and world-weariness which had afflicted him after he left Granada behind, a terrible wrench which had been made worse by the loss of one of his wives after the other. Now he was scheming, challenging, his fists ready to fight, his eyes once more alight with purpose.

  For the journey, he and I were on horseback and the women on mules, which meant that we had to go at their pace. At one point, Warda came alongside Muhammad. I dropped back level with Mariam. She slowed down imperceptibly. Our parents drew further away.

  ‘Hasan!’

  I had not addressed a word to her since we left Fez four hours earlier. I gave her a glance which meant at most ‘Is your animal being a nuisance?’ But she had taken off her light sand-coloured veil, and a sad smile covered her pale face.

  ‘Your uncle cherishes you as if you were his own son, doesn’t he?’

  The question seemed pointless and out of place. I agreed brusquely, not wanting to discuss my relations with my mother’s family with Warda’s daughter. But that was not her purpose.

  ‘When I have children, will you love them as he loves you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  But my ‘Of course’ was too quick, too gruff. And embarrassed.

  I was afraid of what might follow. It took a long time. I glanced towards Mariam; her silence irritated me only a little less than her questions. She no longer looked at me, but she had not put on her veil again, in spite of the dust of the road. I turned towards her and looked at her properly, for the first time for a long time. She was no less appealing than on the day when I saw her coming towards me in her mother’s arms in the galley which brought us into exile. Her skin was no less pink, her lips no less shining. Only the kohl on her eyelids gave her the air of a woman. And her silhouette. As I looked at her, she sat up, and I could make out the line of her bosom. Her heart was beating, or was it mine? I lowered my eyes. In a single year, she had ripened, she had become beautiful and arousing.

  ‘When I have children, will you love them?’

  I should have been annoyed, but I smiled, because I suddenly remembered her habit, since she was a year old, of asking for the same toy three, four, ten times, in the same tone without giving up.

  ‘Of course I shall love them.’

  ‘Will you also talk to their mother like your uncle talks to Salma?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Will you visit her often? Will you ask her if all is well with her? Will you listen to her sorrows?’

  ‘Yes, Mariam, yes!’

  She pulled sharply on her bridle; her mule reared up. I stopped; she looked straight at me:

  ‘But why do you never speak to me? Why do you never come and ask me if I weep at night? I must fear all other men: my father today, my husband tomorrow, all those who are not related to me and from whom I should hide myself.’

  She gave the mule its head, and it set off at a trot. I hurried to stay at her side. I still did not speak to her, but oddly enough, I was frightened for her, and a sudden affection for her radiated from my eyes. It seemed as if some danger awaited her.

  Halfway between Fez and Meknes we stopped for the night in a village called ‘Ar, Shame. The imam of the mosque offered to accommodate us in returh for a donation for the orphans whom he looked after. He was without great learning, but with a very pleasant manner, and lost no time in telling us why this village should have such a name.

  The inhabitants, he informed us, had always been known for their greed, and used to suffer from this reputation. The merchant caravans avoided it and would not stop there. One day, having learned that the King of Fez was hunting lions in the neighbourhood, they decided to invite him and his court, and killed a number of sheep in his honour. The sovereign had dinner and went to bed. Wishing to show their generosity, they placed a huge goatskin bottle before his door and agreed to fill it up with milk for the royal breakfast. The villagers all had to milk their goats and then each of them had to go to tip his bucket into the container. Given its great size, each of them said to himself that he might just as well dilute his milk with a good quantity of water without anyone noticing. To the extent that in the morning such a thin liquid was poured out for the king and his court that it had no other taste than the taste of meanness and greed.

  However, what I remember of my stay in that village had nothing to do with the incurable fault of its inhabitants but far more with the indescribably frightening experience which I had there.

  The imam had received us well, and suggested that we should sleep in a wooden hut near the mosque, which had a pen next to it for our animals. Warda and Mariam slept inside, while my father and I preferred to sleep on the roof, where we could take advantage of the cool air of the summer night. So we were there on the roof when, around midnight, two huge lions, evidently attracted by the smell of the horses and the mules, came up to our door and tried to tear down the rough fence of thorns which protected our beasts. The horses began to neigh as if possessed, and threw themselves against the walls of the hut, which threatened to collapse with each charge. This continued for two hours or more, until one of the lions, no doubt enraged by the thousands of needles which pricked him every time he tried to get over the fence, turned towards the door and began to scratch it and slash at it with his claws. My father and I watched all this, powerless to intervene, knowing full well that the animals might break their way through to the women and eat them up without us being able to do anything other than watch from the roof, apart from wanting to throw ourselves at their jaws as a matter of honour. From below we could hear Mariam’s screams and Warda’s prayers, calling upon the Madonna in Castilian.

  In a trembling voice, Muhammad made a vow: if we survived, he would break his journey to make a pilgrimage to the village of Taghya, and place an offering upon the tomb of wali Bu ‘Izza, a saint famous for his many miracles involving lions.

  I do not know whether it was the intercession of the saint or that of the mother of the Messiah which was the more effective, but in any case the lions eventually seemed to become weary and lose interest, and in the first glimmers of dawn they went away, although their roars, which were only a little less frightening, still reached us from the nearby mountain. It was only when the village came to life in the early hours of the morning that we had the courage to leave our shelter. However, before continuing our journey, we had to wait for a long caravan to come past. Determined to fulfil his vow immediately, Muhammad wanted to find a group of pilgrims at Meknes who were leaving for Taghya.

  Arriving there a week later, and seeing the vast crowd of people who, like ourselves, were visiting the wali’s tomb, I understood the perpetual dread which lions strike in the hearts of the inhabitants of Africa. I was to experience this even more profoundly during my travels. How many times, on arriving at a village, have I seen the inhabitants gathered together, in deep distress, because a family has just been devoured by these savage beasts! How many times, when wishing to go in a particular direction, have the guides directed me another way, simply because a pride of lions had just decimated a whole caravan! It has even happened that one of these beasts alone attacked a detachment of two hundred armed horsemen, and managed to kill five or six of them before beating a retreat.

  Certainly, the lion is the bravest of all animals, and I say this unreservedly, because I bore the name of this beast for the eight years of my stay in Italy. However, I must make it clear that those who live in the cold lands are far less fierce than those who live in the hotter ones. In order to silence a braggart in Fez, one says to him ‘You are as brave as the lions of Agla; even the calves can nibble at their tails.’ It is true that in the place of this name a child only has to run shouting behind
a lion for the latter to run away. In another village in the mountains, called Red Stone, the lions wander between the houses to eat the bones which are left out for them, and everyone mixes with them without fear. I have also heard that when a woman finds herself alone witji a lion in an isolated place she has only to uncover a certain part of her body in front of him for the animal to roar loudly, lower his eyes and slink away. May everyone be free to believe what he will!

  On the way back from this makeshift pilgrimage, I remembered the vague feeling of apprehension that I had experienced for Mariam. A premonition of the lions’ attack on our hut? For the time being, I thought so. At the age of twelve I still believed that as between beasts and men the former could do the most damage.

  The Year of the Great Recitation

  907 A.H.

  17 July 1501 – 6 July 1502

  Mariam’s fiancé was four times her age and twice her height, had an ill-gotten fortune and the smile of those who have learned at an early age that life is a perpétuai swindle. At Fez he was called the Zarwali, and many envied him, since this former shepherd had built the largest palace in the city, the largest, that is, after that of the ruler, a piece of elementary common sense for anyone who wanted to make sure that his head remained attached to his body.

  No one knew how the Zarwali’s fortune had grown so vast. For the first forty years of his life, it was said, he and his goats had roamed over the mountain of Bani Zarwal in the Rif, thirty miles from the sea. Many years later I happened to pay a visit to the area, where I observed a strange phenomenon. At the bottom of the valley there was an opening in the earth, rather like a cave, from which a huge flame issued continuously. All round it was a brownish coloured pool full of a thick liquid with a pervasive smell. Many travellers came to marvel at this wonder, and threw in branches or pieces of wood, which were burnt up on the spot. Some believe that it is the mouth of Hell.